Country Life
BY IAN NIALL WALKING along the banks of a lake last week 1 came upon a great army of young frogs. They were, of course, the result of the assembling of an earlier army of frogs that had converged there through the bog and heather to spawn in the shallows of the shelf that is the edge of this particular lake. Countless thousands of cells produced tadpoles that grew, in spite of losses. to an equally astounding number of miniature frogs. When the water temperature became right they moved to the new element by swim- ming to the stones and then swarming up the banks, hopping in such masses that if one walked on the ground where they were, one was certain to kill hundreds. A few days after my encounter with the young frogs I passed that way again. There was not one to be seen. Some had been gobbled up by hungry birds and snakes, no doubt, but the great army had gone hopping on, dispersing in the grass and round rushes to radiate into the surrounding country. What wonderful natural patterns there are, from the journey to the sea of the smolt and the return of a grilse to the reappear- ance of the swallow and swift in summer or the southward wandering of the snow buntings.
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